Ah, to be a prisoner in my own home

The main lesson of this past week as far as I'm concerned is that being sentenced to "house arrest" can mean subtly different things for different people.

For example, if you look closely enough, you can spot several details that distinguish former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's house-arrest sentence from that of the rapper T.I.

Bhutto, who heads Pakistan's main opposition party, had her home in the city of Lahore barricaded by 4,000 Pakistani police officers while her supporters outside were shot with rubber bullets.

On the other hand, T.I., who was arrested on federal weapons charges, is waltzing around his home in an orange bathrobe (The house-arrest version of the orange prison jumpsuit?) while his supporters watch him thank his lawyers in a video at streetcred.com. Plus, his house, located just outside of Atlanta, only was barricaded by five Pakistani police officers.

As you read this, Bhutto is working feverishly around the clock to fight the imposition of emergency rule by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. T.I., meanwhile, is "doing a lot of reading, doing a lot of writing, working on my next album. It's called 'Paper Trail.' "

Both situations raise numerous questions: In an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan, does the fate of the free world hang in the balance? Can a Web site calling itself streetcred.com possibly have street cred?

And, most crucially, how can I see about getting sentenced to house arrest? At the risk of sounding insensitive to the plight of an unfairly persecuted leader -- or to Benazir Bhutto -- being confined to your home doesn't sound all that bad. Especially considering that Ellen decided to keep her show on the air during the writers' strike.

Now, realistically speaking, I'm thinking of a house arrest that falls somewhere between that for a political dissident under an autocratic regime without the rule of law and that for the king of Southern hip-hop. In other words, house arrest in my own two-bedroom apartment, preferably commencing before my friend's band's upcoming gig that I promised to go to.

Seriously, could there be a better excuse for getting out of things you don't want to do? From the big (going home for Thanksgiving) to the minor (taking out the trash), nothing can quiet a demanding parent, partner or roommate better than lifting up your pant leg to reveal your ankle bracelet monitor, shrugging and saying, "Sorry, no can do. House arrest."

Twenty, even 10 years ago, I might have been singing a different tune. But these days, there's almost nothing desirable you can do outside of your home that you can't do inside of it. Movies? You've got On Demand. Food? You've got delivery. Exercise? You've got the Wii. On the flip side, virtually everything that necessitates leaving your home is something unpleasant -- errands, dental appointments, losing out on a Grammy to Ludacris.

But the real beauty of house arrest is that you don't have to do anything. There is little-to-no pressure on a person under house arrest. Indeed, there's only one expectation that society places on a person under house arrest: that he stays in his house.

Therein, ironically, may lie house arrest's fatal flaw: If you lose your job because you can't do it from home while under house arrest, you soon may find yourself unable to make home payments. In this housing market, foreclosure is no joke for anyone, but particularly not for those under house arrest.

So let's hope that T.I. can make his mortgage payments while he fights the charges against him, and, on a more serious note, let's hope stability and democracy prevail in Pakistan, lest the world blow up and this column then seem horribly inappropriate.